August 3, 2011

“Lauren was the only person I saw with the deepest acting skills, the capacity to sing everything in this role and an emotional richness that really worked for Fanny at all ages,” [director Bartlett] Sher said, noting that “Funny Girl” is told largely in flashbacks. “It was a wonderful surprise. She wasn’t honestly a front-runner for the part until she called me, asked to audition and came in and blew us all away.” Mr. Sher had directed Ms. Ambrose in the 2006 Broadway revival of “Awake and Sing!”

Cool! Ambrose played Claire on "Six Feet Under," and I'm not sure if she ever sang in that part, but back in 2004, I heard her sing "God Bless the Child" on the old Isaac Mizrahi show and I was blown away.

I have never seen a redhead wear pink. With good reason. You could get conjunctivitis just looking at her. Not many singers attempt this song. It's bound to generate invidious comparisons to Billie Holliday. I agree that she has a powerful voice, plus she threw in some seductive moves. That's not at all the way this song is usually sung. If ever a song called for a voice that cracks and gutters, it's this one. But it's no crime for an entertainer to draw attention to herself whatever way she can. Part of the job like a body builder flexing his muscles during compettions.

I stopped right after the second verse, when she got to wailing about money. It's funny how you can have such talented people and they don't know what to do with it - or when it becomes a joke.

I can't sing a lick and I'd still be able to compete with her, artistically, because I ain't so full of myself as to overwhelm the material (Check out how she starts fucking with her hair at one point,...) As rhhardin said, she's not as commanding a singer as she thinks, causing me to stare at her, in a who-does-she-think-she-is? way, rather than to be swept up and go with the song. The song comes first, child.

You should have some sense of what makes good from bad, but, more than anything, you've GOT to have standards.

And it's easy to judge when when someone's performing a standard. I would never do a straight cover, like this, for just that reason - I can't sing. Better to re-work it, and create something new for myself that you can judge. You'd be so blown away by the new arrangement, my limitations as a vocalist probably wouldn't even occur to you. THAT'S what artists do. You don't just go around mangling shit because some silly fashion designer doesn't tell you "no."

I like her; had no idea she could sing. Claire Fisher was my favorite character on 6 Feet Under.

Which reminds me: that show was one of the few-- maybe the only-- Hollywood product(s) in recent times (Bush era) that portrayed a happy relationship between political opposites: between the artsy photographer (Ambrose) & the Republican lawyer. It was so strange simply to see a Republican portrayed as a good guy (& smart, witty etc.). I was surprised to see that at the time; in retrospect it seems even more remarkable & anomalous.

Ah! Just remembered Alec Baldwin's character on 30 Rock. OK, maybe it's not as rare as I thought.

I guess the real anomaly would be to see the character of an artsy type (all the more so a woman, black, or gay) who also happened to be a Republican/ conservative. Like some of the esteemed characters at Althouse. But then, that wouldn't be a "type."